Here’s Jonah Goldberg:

Linda Greenhouse, longtime Supreme Court reporter for the New York Times and currently a Yale law professor, penned an op-ed for the Times in which she emoted that Arizona has become a Nazi-esque “police state” where it is a crime to be “breathing while undocumented.”

Now, I don’t want to dwell on Greenhouse’s gas, since she not only misread the law, she literally read the wrong law (an earlier draft that was changed before passage, actually).

But that bit about “breathing while undocumented” strikes a chord. Because, you see, under Obamacare, it is now something of a crime to “breath while uninsured,” too. In fact, if you really want to hear the government say “Deine papieren, bitte!” just wait until that law is fully implemented, assuming the “new nullifiers” fail.

So here’s where that wacky proposal I mentioned earlier comes in. Let’s throw it all back to the states. Arizona can be an illegal-immigrant-free zone and New York can hold an open house for everyone. The same goes for health care. States that want universal health care can provide it, including to illegal immigrants (or should I just say “immigrants”?). Other states can let the market rule. The feds would save piles of money that can go to paying off our credit cards (or to antiterrorism, to deal with undocumented New Yorkers/terrorists).

Arizona using law enforcement to protect the borders that the Federal government refuses to protect is “police state” fascism, but that same Federal government hiring an additional 15,000 IRS agents to fine people or withhold refunds for not having health insurance is health care “reform.” The former is specifically dictated in the U.S. Constitution. The latter makes a mockery of the Constitution’s “Commerce Clause” (if you’re not engaging in said commerce of purchasing health insurance how does Congress have the legal authority to regulate that?)

That’s the Liberal’s logic. Of course, George Orwell called it something different.

President Barack Obama is quickly approaching the half-way point of his first term and he’s already breaking a number of records. Unfortunately for him, they’re almost all bad records — and almost all tied to the poor economic situation of the country.

His job approval rating is already the worst in 50 years that’s been seen by any president at this point in their presidency. Approval ratings are usually – but not always – tied to economics.

While there’s still time for his administration to correct the demise, one gets the feeling that the almost unprecedented hostility his administration has towards business, which appears to be mired deep in leftist economic ideology, proves that such a correction (as Clinton made in his term) will not occur, and Obama risks becoming the most disliked one-term president since Jimmy Carter.

What are some of the other historic but poor key performance indicators for Obama?

See Gross Domestic Product and the Unemployment Rate – probably the single two most important economic figures for any president.

I crunched some numbers, courtesy of the Federal government’s own data, namely the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) for GDP, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for unemployment data.

Obama’s GDP numbers, scored quarterly as opposed to monthly unemployment data, are not horrible, but nowhere near strong enough to save him alone.

Adjusted for inflation (using the BEA’s 2005 dollars scoring) Obama has had a lackluster .18% (that’s point-1-8) economic growth. By contrast, President George W. Bush (scored the same) had a 2.0% quarterly average. Put differently, the Bush GDP was 11 times more successful than Obama. But again, lots of presidents have lackluster GDP years.

But the most dire picture for Obama regards the unemployment data, and underemployment data — the latter being persons who purposely take a job at part-time or less equitable than their previous one in order to avoid complete unemployment. 20.3% of the U.S. workforce was underemployed in March.

The U.S. government has kept standardized unemployment data since 1953 (data previous to that was less standardized).  That’s 63 years. During those 63 years the historical annual average is 5.72 percent. The historical annual median is 5.59 percent.

The Obama presidency is a whopping 9.49 percent. This means that Obama has the dishonor of being ranked as having the next-to-last (#62) and fourth-from-last (#60) rank of annual unemployment rates in 63 years.

Ironically, the worst year was 1982, under Reagan, but prior to his economic tax cuts and incentives. So, short of Obama pulling a Reagan and encouraging business growth and private-sector spending through tax cuts in order to expand the size of the economy and employment numbers, one doesn’t see much light at the end of the tunnel.

This is highly significant considering that many economic conservatives felt luke-warm about the Bush economy, even though Bush’s unemployment average was 5.14, well below the historic annual mean and median — six of eight Bush years were in the top 50% of the unemployment rates, and most of those during the period in which his tax cuts had peaked and most encouraged business hiring and investment. Unfortunately for Bush, he had some bookend poor years, from the 9-11 aftermath on one side, and the tax cuts sunsetting (thus discouraging further business spending and investment) on the other side.

(By the way, the Truman and Eisenhower administrations monopolize the best employment data, proving that the late 40s and 50s were truly unprecidented growth periods in our nation’s history.)

So, what does this mean?

Well, put simply, the first thing it means is in the words of the late Patrick Moynihan, you are entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts. The economic data does not lie and bodes poorly for both the president and our country.

It also means that the private sector is hedging their bets (and their employment and investment) and do not buy the Obama sales pitch that the trillion-dollar stimuluses worked, or that his ObamaCare health plan is not a tax or will magically save them money.

The latter notion was so ridiculous that even ABC News and former Clinton staffer George Stephanopoulos — hardly your right-wing tea party attender — called out Obama in an interview accusing him of raising taxes during a poor economy — something that only the most Marxist of economists would do.

Companies including AT&T, Deere & Co., AK Steel, Prudential and Caterpillar have all publicly announced in the past few weeks that the ObamaCare plan will force them to lay even more people off to save costs. Verizon alone found that the plan will cost them $970 million. You can hire a lot of people with $970 million.

Some news reports announced that companies “unexpectedly” cut payrolls in March — many tying that decision to the health care law. But there should be nothing “unexpected” about companies laying personnel off when the health care law is 2,000 pages of disincentives for business. Comedian Dennis Miller put it best, noting, “Only Democrats would consider losing doctors but adding 14,000 IRS agents a successful health care plan.”

Bloomberg reported, “The costs may reduce corporate profits by as much as $14 billion as companies account for the impact of the health-care reforms, according to benefits consulting firm Towers Watson.”

This news should strike fear into the heart of any Democrat running for re-election, and cause them to offset — and I thought Democrats loved “offsets” — the cost of ObamaCare with some other kind of business incentives. Instead of such common-sense campaigning, Democrats plan another show trial where business leaders are forced before Congress to explain their anti-Obama conspiracy.

The Wall Street Journal mocked the idea that these companies had a hidden agenda, noting that they’re simply following “the Financial Standard Accounting Board’s 1990 statement No. 106, which requires businesses to immediately restate their earnings in light of their expected future retiree health liabilities.” So the government regulates that companies must come clean on their perceived losses, and when they do so, then pulls them before a Congressional panel to attack them for following these Congressional regulations!

House Energy and Commerce Committee Rep. Henry Waxman (D, Idiocracy) explained that these companies’ analysis is in “conflict with independent analyses.” By “independent analysis,” Rep. Waxman means the Congressional Budget Office, which is controlled… by Congress. Worse, the CBO only judges the estimates given to them (by Democrats on Congress, that is), all other research is considered out of scope, and the CBO scores statically, not dynamically, meaning they don’t take into account how investment and hiring behavior is affected by surpluses or deficits.

Finally, 18 states of the Union have now filed lawsuits against the federal government for violating the Tenth Amendment, which gives states and the people in those states the sole power over anything not specified as a federal power in Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. No matter what the Supreme Court says on this matter, combining this federal power grab with a poor economy, GDP, unemployment and Waxman War on Business, the Obama Administration will have a very deep hole to get out of by Novembers of 2010 and 2012.

Rule number one of standing in a hole and digging it too deep is: stop digging. But thus far Obama is “shovel ready” and heaving away.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and as people start to realize how many anti-business provisions are in this 1,900-page monstrosity they’re going to find that this is really, really awful tasting pudding.

Just 24 hours into this mess, Investor Business Daily’s Dave Hogberg finds a quick 20 ways ObamaCare erodes your liberty and hurts business opportunity:

The sections described below are taken from HR 3590 as agreed to by the Senate and from the reconciliation bill as displayed by the Rules Committee.

1. You are young and don’t want health insurance? You are starting up a small business and need to minimize expenses, and one way to do that is to forego health insurance? Tough. You have to pay $750 annually for the “privilege.” (Section 1501)

2. You are young and healthy and want to pay for insurance that reflects that status? Tough. You’ll have to pay for premiums that cover not only you, but also the guy who smokes three packs a day, drink a gallon of whiskey and eats chicken fat off the floor. That’s because insurance companies will no longer be able to underwrite on the basis of a person’s health status. (Section 2701).

3. You would like to pay less in premiums by buying insurance with lifetime or annual limits on coverage? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer such policies, even if that is what customers prefer. (Section 2711).

4. Think you’d like a policy that is cheaper because it doesn’t cover preventive care or requires cost-sharing for such care? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer policies that do not cover preventive services or offer them with cost-sharing, even if that’s what the customer wants. (Section 2712).

5. You are an employer and you would like to offer coverage that doesn’t allow your employees’ slacker children to stay on the policy until age 26? Tough. (Section 2714).

6. You must buy a policy that covers ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services; chronic disease management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care.

You’re a single guy without children? Tough, your policy must cover pediatric services. You’re a woman who can’t have children? Tough, your policy must cover maternity services. You’re a teetotaler? Tough, your policy must cover substance abuse treatment. (Add your own violation of personal freedom here.) (Section 1302).

7. Do you want a plan with lots of cost-sharing and low premiums? Well, the best you can do is a “Bronze plan,” which has benefits that provide benefits that are actuarially equivalent to 60% of the full actuarial value of the benefits provided under the plan. Anything lower than that, tough. (Section 1302 (d) (1) (A))

8. You are an employer in the small-group insurance market and you’d like to offer policies with deductibles higher than $2,000 for individuals and $4,000 for families? Tough. (Section 1302 (c) (2) (A).

9. If you are a large employer (defined as at least 50 employees) and you do not want to provide health insurance to your employee, then you will pay a $750 fine per employee (It could be $2,000 to $3,000 under the reconciliation changes). Think you know how to better spend that money? Tough. (Section 1513).

10. You are an employer who offers health flexible spending arrangements and your employees want to deduct more than $2,500 from their salaries for it? Sorry, can’t do that. (Section 9005 (i)).

11. If you are a physician and you don’t want the government looking over your shoulder? Tough. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to use your claims data to issue you reports that measure the resources you use, provide information on the quality of care you provide, and compare the resources you use to those used by other physicians. Of course, this will all be just for informational purposes. It’s not like the government will ever use it to intervene in your practice and patients’ care. Of course not. (Section 3003 (i))

12. If you are a physician and you want to own your own hospital, you must be an owner and have a “Medicare provider agreement” by Feb. 1, 2010. (Dec. 31, 2010 in the reconciliation changes.) If you didn’t have those by then, you are out of luck. (Section 6001 (i) (1) (A))

13. If you are a physician owner and you want to expand your hospital? Well, you can’t (Section 6001 (i) (1) (B). Unless, it is located in a county where, over the last five years, population growth has been 150% of what it has been in the state (Section 6601 (i) (3) ( E)). And then you cannot increase your capacity by more than 200% (Section 6001 (i) (3) (C)).

14. You are a health insurer and you want to raise premiums to meet costs? Well, if that increase is deemed “unreasonable” by the Secretary of Health and Human Services it will be subject to review and can be denied. (Section 1003)

15. The government will extract a fee of $2.3 billion annually from the pharmaceutical industry. If you are a pharmaceutical company what you will pay depends on the ratio of the number of brand-name drugs you sell to the total number of brand-name drugs sold in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the brand-name drugs in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2.3 billion, or $230,000,000. (Under reconciliation, it starts at $2.55 billion, jumps to $3 billion in 2012, then to $3.5 billion in 2017 and $4.2 billion in 2018, before settling at $2.8 billion in 2019 (Section 1404)). Think you, as a pharmaceutical executive, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 9008 (b)).

16. The government will extract a fee of $2 billion annually from medical device makers. If you are a medical device maker what you will pay depends on your share of medical device sales in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the medical devices in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2 billion, or $200,000,000. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for R&D? Tough. (Section 9009 (b)).

The reconciliation package turns that into a 2.9% excise tax for medical device makers. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 1405).

17. The government will extract a fee of $6.7 billion annually from insurance companies. If you are an insurer, what you will pay depends on your share of net premiums plus 200% of your administrative costs. So, if your net premiums and administrative costs are equal to 10% of the total, you will pay 10% of $6.7 billion, or $670,000,000. In the reconciliation bill, the fee will start at $8 billion in 2014, $11.3 billion in 2015, $1.9 billion in 2017, and $14.3 billion in 2018 (Section 1406).Think you, as an insurance executive, know how to better spend that money? Tough.(Section 9010 (b) (1) (A and B).)

18. If an insurance company board or its stockholders think the CEO is worth more than $500,000 in deferred compensation? Tough.(Section 9014).

19. You will have to pay an additional 0.5% payroll tax on any dollar you make over $250,000 if you file a joint return and $200,000 if you file an individual return. What? You think you know how to spend the money you earned better than the government? Tough. (Section 9015).

That amount will rise to a 3.8% tax if reconciliation passes. It will also apply to investment income, estates, and trusts. You think you know how to spend the money you earned better than the government? Like you need to ask. (Section 1402).

20. If you go for cosmetic surgery, you will pay an additional 5% tax on the cost of the procedure. Think you know how to spend that money you earned better than the government? Tough. (Section 9017).

Before I begin, reflect on the the Tenth Amendment, and Article 1, Section 8 (which :

Amendment X: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

A1, S8, Clause 3: Congress shall be empowered “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes”.

Meaning, if it wasn’t listed explicitly in Article I, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution, it wasn’t of federal authority, but rather that of the States and the people, corresponding with the logic that the masses had far greater access to their local politicians than to a bunch of douche-bags in Washington D.C.

This argument, of course, has been debated back to the days of Thomas Jefferson versus Alexander Hamilton. In this case of ObamaCare, as in that of Hamilton’s call for a national bank, our politicians in Washington are once again usurping the catch-all “Commerce Clause” of Article I, Section 8. At least back then — as George Washington sided with Hamilton over Jefferson — one could reasonably and rationally debate that a federal bank was an implied Congressional power.

So, with that, here are some thoughts:

1. How does the “Commerce Clause” of the Constitution empower Congress to legislate the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to fine any person who does not purchase a health care plan deeded “acceptable” to the federal government (i.e., unelected federal bureaucrats determine what is an acceptable plan, not the consumer)! According to a Congressional Ways & Means report “Individuals could be fined $2,250 or 2 percent of income, whichever is greater, if you are unable to prove you have ‘minimum essential coverage.’” A note for privacy aficionados: in order to do this the IRS will have unprecedented access to your medical history. And liberals said they were worried about John Ashcroft..?

Indeed, this is warping the Constitution to a whole new level — saying the “Commerce Clause” somehow regulates the act of NOT purchasing something — and literally raping the intent of the Tenth Amendment — to limit the powers of the federal government, at least in lieu of the states.

Just 24 hours after the House’s passage of ObamaCare a dozen different states are preparing lawsuits on this basis alone.

2. Elections Matter! ObamaCare passed by just seven votes.

Woe to any Republican who thought the egregious spending from 2004 to 2008 would not have negative consequences. The public revolted. This includes conservatives, who disengaged from disappointment — don’t let any liberal imply that conservatives were silent or accepting of the George W. Bush spending. A president doesn’t drop to a 20% approval rating without losing at least half of their base (being that we are in essence a polarized 50/50, 49/51, 51/49 electorate for several national elections in a row). This was followed by the electoral death blow — not just losing the presidency, but nominating a fiscal moderate in John McCain, rather than a fiscal conservative who might have rallied some Republican victories in the House — perhaps just seven of them…

Chew on that bitter crow a while.

3. This isn’t a health care bill. It’s a dependency bill. And it’s a jobs bill — federal jobs, that is.

The jobs bill comes by nationalizing one-sixth or one-seventh (depending how you tally it) of the national econ0my. It started with the announcement of hiring an additional 16,500 IRS employees. That’s the tip of the iceberg.

The power grab is in attempting to make every citizen dependent upon the federal government for their health care. Get the middle class on the dole. Even FDR couldn’t do that.

4. Next thought. I’ll let John Stossel explain the law of unintended consequences:

The ban on “discriminating” against anyone with a pre-existing condition. This is popular, and yet one of the most damaging part of the bill. It forbids insurance companies to charge sick people more for insurance. The result: I will wait until I get sick to get insurance. The bill supposedly has a $750 fine for not buying insurance [Page 323.] But that won’t even be enforced [page 336]. Even if I did have to pay a $750 fine, so what? That’s much less than the $20,000 plus that it would cost me to buy insurance for my family. I’d be a fool to buy insurance now.

Soon only sick people will buy insurance, so premiums will skyrocket. Will our politicians see their mistake and fix it? No, they’ll bash “evil” insurance companies. The insurance market is competitive today. Obamacare will reduce competition.

5.  Twenty years from now Canadians will no longer need to cross the northern border to America in order to see specialists and get treatment they can’t get without being stuck in an 18-month waiting list back home. Americans might find the Canadian waiting list shorter than their own. (By the way, when I needed a CT, I got one the next day. Our friend’s father in the U.K. is on a months-long waiting list).

As David Gratzer explained in his recent book:

“In Alberta, Canada’s wealthiest province, 50 percent of outpatients waited more than 41 days for an MRI scan in 2008. In Saskatchewan, 10 percent of patients awaiting knee-replacement surgery waited 616 days or longer for care. In Nova Scotia, 50 percent of hip-replacement patients waited 201 days or longer for surgery. Wait times for these and other procedures don’t factor in any wait to get a referral from a family doctor – and more than 4 million Canadians can’t find a family doctor because of a national doctor shortage created by government cutbacks to medical schools in the 1990s. The situation is so dire that some townships hold lotteries, with winners gaining access to a family doc.”

And just so you know it’s not just about waits, quality, or lack thereof, becomes a factor:

“The screening gap: They [Canadians] are more than 15 percent less likely to have ever had a mammogram; 10 percent less likely to have had a Pap smear; 30 percent less likely to have had a PSA test; and more than 20 percent less likely to have ever had a colonoscopy… A broad cancer review of Europe and the United States, published in September 2007 in The Lancet Oncology, considers five-year outcomes. For the 16 types of cancer examined in that paper, American men have a five-year survival rate of 66 percent, compared with only 47 percent for European men. In Europe, only Sweden has an overall survival rate of more than 6o percent. American women have a 63 percent chance of living at least five years after a cancer diagnosis, compared with 56 percent for European women; only five European countries have an overall survival rate of more than 6o percent.”

Coming soon to a health care plan near you — lower cancer survival rates!

6. But at least the Canadian and U.K. health care costs aren’t rising like in the U.S., right? Um… no.

Also from Gratzer:

“The cost of health care in socialized-care countries like France, Canada and Ireland is growing at roughly the same rate as in the United  States. Between 2000 and 2006 [the latest data], the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] average real annual growth rate for health spending was 4.9 percent; the U.S. rate was  4.95 percent. Despite the rationing and central government control, these countries  haven’t stopped the trend of rising costs.”

7. So what’s the good news? Any?

Randy Barnett:

“This is big. With the passage of the health care bill – especially the way it was passed – the political landscape of the United States has changed, perhaps forever. And I am not referring to the inevitable growth of statism that has resulted from nationalized health care in Europe. I am referring to a clear demarcation between the parties that was not evident in the last election. If John McCain had been elected, we would have had something like this bill enacted last year in a bipartisan fashion – as was Social Security and Medicare. Such a bill would have been irreversible.

Now the political consciousness of an enormous number Americans is entirely focused on government and the political class. There is a genuinely grassroots “liberty movement” in this country that has not existed in my lifetime – perhaps not in a century or more.”

Even the New York Times concedes:

“Never in modern memory has a major piece of legislation passed without a single Republican vote. Even President Lyndon B. Johnson got just shy of half of Republicans in the House to vote for Medicare in 1965, a piece of legislation that was denounced with many of the same words used to oppose this one.”

This is on Obama and Democrats. Period.

8. Lastly (before dinner), a note on Republican stra-tegery.

I’m all for the “repeal” push, not that it will work, but to keep up awareness and anger, but along with that Republicans better offer some alternatives — from interstate insurance company competition, to tort reform, to individual deductions for health care expenses as businesses do, for starters — and more importantly communicate those ideas.

The only way to counter the inevitable “Party of No” label the mainstream media is sure to offer is to prove that this wasn’t an either-or dilemma — either you keep your existing problematic system, OR, we can nationalize one-seventh of the economy (Um, I’ll pick door #3). Republican latency, unimaginative leaders, and spending enabled the Obama Democrats to their victory yesterday. Never forget that.

Um, “Deem and Pass” that is, although the American public, of whom only 25 percent polled actually want the existing version(s) of ObamaCare (and a CNN poll at that!) might one day argue to the Democrats’ demise that it was “Demon Passed” — given the amount of obfuscation and chicanery Democrats are exhibiting to enact it without ever having voted on it.

If you’re confused by all of this Congressional lawspeak, or should I say lawfare, (or confused by the above paragraph which was admittedly written after a very long work day) you are not alone. If the Democrats really thought the American people wanted this they wouldn’t go to such lengths to warp Article I into something that even George Orwell himself would never have imagined (and I do hate it so when any politician explains in parental “Shut up and swallow it” language to us dense, nonelitist 300 million consumers how something is good for us). Thomas Paine picked up a pen (and musket) for far an intrusion on transparency and democracy.

James Taranto describes below:

Late last year, the House and Senate each passed its own version of ObamaCare. Normally, these bills would go to a “conference committee,” at which selected congressmen from both chambers would iron out the differences between them, producing a “conference report”–a single bill that would become law after both chambers approve it and the president signs it.

Scott Brown’s election made it impossible to enact ObamaCare using the usual procedure. Republican senators now number 41, enough to prevent any conference report from coming to the floor for a vote. For whatever reason–and we’ll speculate on this in a moment–President Obama was determined to ram this thing through despite the message the voters of Massachusetts sent in January. So congressional Democrats had to come up with a Plan B.

Since the House, unlike the Senate, operates for the most part by simple majority rule, the simplest solution would be for the House to pass the version of ObamaCare that the Senate already approved. It could then go to President Obama for his signature without any further Senate action required. Take that, Massachuses and Massachusettes!

But this option, while procedurally simple, was politically impossible. As Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters, “Nobody wants to vote for the Senate bill.” Some liberal House members view it as insufficiently socialistic since, unlike the House bill, it would not put the government directly into the business of selling insurance (the so-called public option). And most everyone is squeamish about the special deals struck to win the votes of senators like Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, Florida’s Bill Nelson and Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman. Principled moderates all, they steadfastly refused to vote for legislation they didn’t believe in unless the price was right.

Democrats thus had to find a way of getting the Senate to make some changes. They alighted on “reconciliation,” a procedure through which certain legislation involving the federal budget can go through the Senate on a simple majority vote. The House would pass the Senate bill, and both houses would pass the reconciliation bill, yielding a final product that, if all went well, would be merely miserable as opposed to horrible.

Up to this point, the procedural logic makes sense even if the political logic doesn’t. But now things take a bizarre turn. The promise of reconciliation isn’t enough to persuade some representatives to set aside their objections to the Senate bill. The result is the delightfully named “Slaughter rule,” under which the House, instead of approving the Senate bill, would approve a “rule” that would “deem” the Senate bill to have “passed.”

Republicans object to this bit of trickery–hence their effort to force a vote on holding a vote. “By supporting this resolution, Democrats can demonstrate that they will not try to hide from their constituents,” the Post quotes Minority Leader John Boehner as saying.

What will probably happen is that Democrats will block the vote on whether to hold a vote on the bill. Then–assuming Pelosi is able to scrape together a majority, which remains uncertain–they will vote on the rule to deem the Senate bill passed. They would thus bypass both the vote on whether to hold the vote and the vote itself.

But they would still have to approve the “rule” to “deem” the bill “passed,” which–assuming the courts either approve of this procedural dodge or decide the question is not justiciable–is the functional equivalent of voting for the Senate bill.

The Post reports that Democrats “suggested Republicans were trying to distract from the real discussion of what’s actually in the reform bill. . . . ‘If you don’t want to talk about substance, [you] talk about process,’ Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said.” The Washington Times quotes Rep. Steny Hoyer, Pelosi’s No. 2: “ ’So what,’ says [sic] the American people. What they’re interested in is what resulted. ‘What did you do for me and my family to make my life more secure and better and greater quality.’ And that’s what we’re trying to do.”

But if the substance of the bill is as good as they say it is–indeed, if it is anything other than a monstrosity–why do they have to come up with one procedural gimmick after another to persuade their fellow partisans to approve it?

Furthermore, especially if the American people care about substance and not process, the Slaughter rule looks delusional. Is any voter going to judge his congressman more favorably because he voted for a “rule” to “deem” the Senate bill “passed” rather than cast the substantively identical vote to pass the bill? Is any wavering member of Congress foolish enough to expect that his constituents will make this distinction?

Admittedly, one can’t rule out the possibility of congressmen behaving foolishly. Perhaps Pelosi and Hoyer are close to a majority and the Slaughter scam is targeted at a handful of waverers whom they know to be especially gullible.

But such tactics seem more likely to backfire. CNN, for example, reports that undecided Pennsylvania Democrat Jason Altmire “said he doesn’t support Slaughter’s idea because it ‘increases the opportunity for the public to say, “You know what, I’m not comfortable with this process.” ’ ”

What accounts for the relentless drive to ram ObamaCare through every procedural obstacle, regardless of the political cost? Ideological zeal, from Obama himself above all, is part of the explanation, but it isn’t sufficient. One can, after all, be ideologically committed to a goal without falling into a self-defeating obsession.

There seems to be an emotional desperation at work here. The legislative success of ObamaCare has become so tied up with Obama’s sense of himself that he feels he must push ahead–and to some extent, the leaders in Congress feel the same way. Obama is not the calm rationalist he seemed during the campaign. But while there’s a place for passion in politics, to be governed by a politician who fails to govern his passions is a frightening and creepy experience.

Here’s John Stossel:

“We are held hostage at any given moment by health insurance companies that deny coverage or drop coverage or charge fees that people can’t afford.” — Barack Obama, Aug. 14, 2009.

“We’re seeing this at the same time where not only is there an economic downturn around the country, but we know that insurance companies are not suffering that same kind of downturn. The five largest insurers in America have declared more than $12 billion worth of profits in 2009.” — Health & Human Services Sec. Kathleen Sebelius.

“At a time when everybody’s getting hammered, they’re making record profits, and premiums are going up. What’s the constraint on that? … Well, part of the way is to make sure that there’s some competition out there.” — Barack Obama, July 2009.

The Saint Petersburg Times’ Fact Check already debunked the last of the three hate-inciting whoppers by the Obama administration, and many others have as well, but that hasn’t changed much. It’s great to read that Mr. Obama is all for “some competition” but it comes off as an empty statement considering that Democrats have gone out of their way to exclude any Republican idea to increase the same, such as insurance pools for individuals, or allowing insurance companies to cross state lines. Democrats are only for “competition” when it means the government getting into the act — but it’s hard to compete with an entity that may borrow perpetually, has no budget, need not answer to its stockholders (i.e., the taxpayers), can print money, and spend any amount it desires. This is competition? If that’s so then the U.S.S.R. was the epitome of free enterprise!

But more to the point of this post: The Obama camp lies. Or at very least exaggerates for anger’s sake. It’s hard to believe they don’t have the data.

Insurance companies don’t make record profits. Indeed they make far less than most industries.

Jeff Anderson explains:

According to the most recent Fortune 500 rankings, health insurers are not even among the top-30 United States industries in profit-margin. Health insurers rank 35th, with a profit-margin of just 2.2 percent — less than one-fifth the profit-margin of railroads. None of the ten largest American health insurers made profits of more than 4.5 percent, and two of them lost money. Health insurers’ collective profit-margin is less than one-eighth that of drug companies and less than one-seventh that of companies that sell medical products or equipment. It’s also less than that of medical facilities. Yet when was the last time you heard President Obama rail against greedy hospitals?

The combined profits of America’s ten largest health insurers are $8.3 billion. That’s less than two-thirds of the profits of Wal-Mart alone, less than half of the profits of General Electric alone, and less than one-seventh of what Medicare loses each year to fraud. Health insurers collectively have one-eighth the profit-margin of McDonald’s or Coke, one-ninth that of eBay, and one-fifteenth that of Merck.

Why don’t these much more profitable companies or industries need to be taken over by the federal government? Why don’t they need to be subjected to something like President Obama’s proposed Health Insurance Rate Authority, which would be run by the same U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that already loses $60 billion of taxpayer money to Medicare fraud each year? (Not that I want to give the Obama administration any ideas.)

In all, the combined profits of the 14 largest American health insurers (the ones who crack the Fortune 1000) are $8.7 billion. That’s less than 0.4 percent, or 1/250th, of overall U.S. health-care costs, which are $2.5 trillion.

Anyone but an ideologue could plainly see that insurance profits aren’t the problem. The problem is having a health-care system with too many middlemen (government or otherwise); too little competition and choice; and too little opportunity for Americans to control their own health-care dollars, shop for value, or even see prices.

If you can’t identify the problem, you aren’t likely to stumble upon the solution. Maybe that’s why the Congressional Budget Office says that, under Obamacare, which would cost $2.5 trillion in its real first decade (2014 to 2023), the average family’s insurance premiums in the individual market would increase by $2,100 in relation to current law — while under the House Republican health bill, which would cost $61 billion (just 2 percent as much as Obamacare), the average premiums would be reduced by 5 to 8 percent.

President Obama likes to say that the Republicans don’t have any ideas, but the House GOP bill would clearly make the American health-care system better. The small bill would make it better still. Obamacare would raise nationwide health costs, siphon billions out of barely solvent Medicare and spend them elsewhere, cut Medicare Advantage benefits by an average of $21,000 per beneficiary in its real first decade, politicize medicine, reduce liberty, raise taxes, cost jobs, and inevitably lead to rationed care.

All one needs to know about President Obama’s “bipartisan” health care summit — and his intentions — is succinctly summarized on their own website (which they tried to scrub, but which thanks to Google caching was all for naught).

[Via Michelle Malkin] White House: Where’s the GOP health care plan? Where’s the GOP healthcare plan?
GOP: Um, it’s linked right on your White House website.
White House: D’oh.

Thanks to the Save Jersey blog for the graphic that says it all. Snicker:

Background here from Daniel Foster who notes: “Ironically, this is perhaps the most exposure the Republican plan has so far received, and all it took was the Democrats saying that it didn’t exist.”

Other ideas? Who needs them? Insurance across state lines? Tort reform? Ha. With just those compromises President Obama could have had his health care bill 12 months ago.

But this isn’t about cost savings, it’s about tipping the political scales to the Europeanization of America; about getting all of middle-class America sucking on the government teet; about reducing individuality and independence, and increasing 1920′s style Wilsonian-Marxist “progressivism,” and dependence. It’s about power, and keeping it by forcing Americans to “mother may I” one-seventh of the economy. Next up, energy consumption in the guise of “saving” the planet via carbon rationing. After that, the food police, and executive pay police, and 401k police, like that Audi commercial on steroids.

So just shut up already and eat what these politicos are forcing down your throat. These fields of bureaucrats and egg-head academic “experts” know what’s best for you, not you,  and certainly not the collective decisions of 300 million consumers via the free market.

And they dared call George W. Bush suffering from “imperial hubris”! Sheesh.

Here’s Charles Krauthammer on how the liberal masses have reacted to their lost Senate seat in Massachusetts:

Liberal expressions of disdain for the intelligence and emotional maturity of the electorate have been, post-Massachusetts, remarkably unguarded. New York Times columnist Charles Blow chided Obama for not understanding the necessity of speaking “in the plain words of plain folks,” because the people are “suspicious of complexity.” Counseled Blow: “The next time he gives a speech, someone should tap him on the ankle and say, ‘Mr. President, we’re down here.’”

A Time magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are “a nation of dodos” that is “too dumb to thrive.”

Obama joined the parade in the State of the Union address when, with supercilious modesty, he chided himself “for not explaining it (health care) more clearly to the American people.” The subject, he noted, was “complex.” The subject, it might also be noted, was one to which the master of complexity had devoted 29 speeches. Perhaps he did not speak slowly enough.

On the contrary, after 29 healthcare speeches by The Great One, and perpetual 24-hour cable news puppets reciting the promises of socialized medicine, the American people understand enough — and they’re not too keen on waiting months for MRIs, CTs or specialists needed to fight life-threatening illnesses. That’s not “free” health care. That’s rationing.